Chapter 45: Aldric de Valdor Does Not Exist
The next morning, Julien arrived at work on far less sleep than he was willing to admit. He had shut down his computer late the night before after adding several lines to the document about Aldric, but had then spent a long time lying awake thinking about the photograph of Emma. Despite that, his day started normally. He set his bag beside his desk, turned on his monitors, and checked the requests that had piled up since the previous day. Several tickets were waiting for a response, an error was preventing part of the interface from loading, and one of his coworkers called over to him.
“Did you get a chance to look at the issue reported on Friday?”
Julien opened the ticket.
“Not yet.”
“Can you take care of it this morning?”
“Yeah.”
He worked for nearly an hour without thinking about Aldric. An error in a function demanded enough of his attention to push everything else aside. He reread several blocks of code, reproduced the problem, fixed a condition, then ran another series of tests. This time, everything worked correctly. He confirmed the fix, replied to the ticket, and moved on to the next one.
Around ten thirty, one of his coworkers left to get coffee. Julien finished one last change before opening a new tab. The cursor blinked in the search bar as he typed: Aldric de Valdor
The results appeared. A few pages contained the name Aldric, several results pointed to fictional characters, and others mentioned names vaguely similar to Valdor, but nothing matched the man he knew.
“Of course.”
Julien went through the first few pages anyway before trying several variations:
Aldric Valdor
Aldrik de Valdor
Aldric Valdore
A de Valdor
None of them produced better results. If Aldric had invented an identity as a knight from another world, he probably hadn’t thought to create fifteen years of digital history to make his story believable.
Julien closed the tab and went back to work.
Less than a minute later, he opened it again.
This time, he decided to search properly. Aldric had mentioned Valdor several times, talked about a Demon King, armies, military campaigns, mountains, and several names Julien couldn’t always remember with certainty. He opened the document he had created the night before and reread the information he had already gathered:
Name: Aldric de Valdor
Age: Around 30
Current occupation: Mover
Claimed origin: Valdor
Claimed former occupation: Knight / Military Commander
Weapon: Sword
Known arrival in France: 2026
Relationship with Emma: To be determined
His gaze lingered on the last line a little longer before he returned to the search engine. This time, he started with Valdor. A few companies used the name, several fictional characters appeared in different works, and some places had similar spellings, but no kingdom resembled the one Aldric had described.
Julien refined his searches:
Valdor kingdom
Valdor war
Valdor knight
Valdor Demon King
Aldric Demon King
The results changed, but none of them told him anything useful. Julien remembered another name he had heard during a conversation with Aldric.
“Malachar.”
He ran several new searches:
Aldric Malachar
Valdor M
Once again, nothing matched what Aldric had told them. Julien leaned back in his chair, staring at the different tabs open in front of him.
“Alright.”
A work message appeared on his screen, forcing him to get back to his actual job. For nearly an hour, he responded to several requests and attended a meeting with two coworkers. Still, the investigation remained in the back of his mind. The fact that Valdor didn’t exist didn’t really interest him anymore. He already knew the kingdom wasn’t real.
The real question was much simpler: Who was Aldric before 2026?
When he finally had a few quiet minutes, Julien changed his approach. He stopped looking for a kingdom, a Demon King, or an imaginary battle. He looked for a real person. His name, variations of it, old public mentions, professional profiles, indexed photographs, organizations, events, or any other trace a man in his thirties might have left behind over the course of his life.
He found nothing. No identifiable public social media profile. No old abandoned account. No comments from years ago. No photographs. Not a single mention of a school, sports club, former employer, or organization.
He changed his search by combining Aldric’s name with the few details he knew: Paris and moving. He tried several combinations, changed the order of the terms, and removed anything that might distort the results, but the conclusion remained the same. He couldn’t find any older trace of him.
The few results he could reasonably connect to Aldric were recent. Far too recent. Julien opened several tabs and compared the dates. The first trace appeared in 2026, followed by a few more over the next several months, but before that, he couldn’t find anything he could confidently link to the young man.
He returned to his folder, created a new document titled Timeline, and began entering the different dates he had managed to confirm.
Julien went through the list once more, double-checked two of the results to make sure he hadn’t missed anything, then added a line at the bottom of the document:
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First identifiable trace: 2026
“You appeared out of nowhere…”
The words brought a faint smile to his face because they almost perfectly matched the story Aldric had been telling them from the beginning: a man from another world. He shook his head.
“That’s impossible.”
An absurd story didn’t become true just because it explained a few anomalies. There had to be something missing. Another name, a previous identity, a childhood spent somewhere else, or some administrative reason why his past had disappeared.
Anything would be more rational than a magical kingdom and a Demon King.
A coworker walked behind him, prompting Julien to minimize the window.
“Were you talking?”
“No.”
“Okay…”
The man continued on his way. Julien waited until he was gone before reopening his searches and continuing, without finding anything more.
At noon, he ate with two coworkers and joined in their conversation. They talked about an update planned for the following week and a problem another developer had managed to create himself several months earlier. Julien joked with them, finished his lunch, and returned to his desk.
But as soon as he was alone in front of his monitors again, he reopened the folder and decided to organize it properly this time. The directory he had created the night before still contained only a few files, but Julien created several subfolders to separate the information he had already gathered:
Identity
Timeline
Relationships
Photos
Statements
Inconsistencies
Emma
A folder with that name already existed elsewhere on his computer and contained infinitely more files than all the ones about Aldric combined, but Julien decided it was necessary to create a second one dedicated specifically to their relationship.
He moved the documents he had already gathered into their respective categories, then opened the main file and added the information he had:
Name: Aldric de Valdor
Age: Between 25 and 30
Height: Over 1.90 m
Current occupation: Mover
Claimed origin: Kingdom of Valdor
Claimed former occupation: Knight / Military Commander
Known weapon: Sword
Digital presence before 2026: None identified
Physical condition: Exceptional
Claimed military experience: Extensive
He thought about the way Aldric moved with his sword and the precision with which he described certain combat situations. Even if his entire story about the Demon King was false, Julien found it hard to believe he had developed reflexes like that from watching videos or training occasionally.
Physical threat level: Very high
The wording seemed excessive. He reread it, considered changing it, then decided to keep it before adding one final line:
Threat level to Emma: Unknown
He thought about the photograph from the night before, the way Emma had been looking at Aldric, and how quickly Aldric had managed to become part of her daily life. He selected Unknown and replaced it.
Threat level to Emma: HIGH
That seemed much more appropriate. Satisfied, Julien moved on to the relationships folder, gathered what little information he had from the group’s conversations, and began mapping out the people around Aldric.
Emma: Extremely close relationship
Patrick: Coworker / Supervisor
Karim: Coworker
Lucas: Coworker / Friend
He still didn’t know Lucas very well, but Emma had mentioned him several times, and Aldric himself had confirmed that he considered Lucas a friend.
Chloé: Recent friend
Sarah: Recent friend
Maxime: Recent friend
Julien: Recent friend
His fingers stopped moving as he stared at the last line. The previous evening immediately came back to him. Aldric had laughed with him, accepted his invitation for another night out, and spent several hours talking with him. Julien had even told Maxime that he liked the guy.
He selected the word friend, deleted it, and replaced it:
Julien: Contact
He saved the document and returned to work. The rest of the afternoon passed normally. Julien solved several problems, replied to various messages, and left the office at his usual time.
On the way home, he bought something to eat before heading back to his apartment. As soon as the door closed behind him, he set down his bag, turned on his computer, and reopened the ALDRIC DE VALDOR folder. This time, he wanted to focus on the inconsistencies in everything Aldric had told them since they first met.
He opened the Statements file and went over the most important points. Taken individually, each one could have been part of the character Aldric insisted he wasn’t playing. Taken together, they formed a story so absurd that Julien didn’t even know where to begin.
He opened the Inconsistencies file and placed his hands on the keyboard. The first problem was obvious.
No identifiable trace before 2026.
Unusually detailed military knowledge.
Initial difficulties with extremely common technology.
Initially limited understanding of modern administrative and social systems.
Apparent absence of any previous social media presence.
Natural proficiency with a real sword.
Hypotheses
1. Deliberately assumed false identity
Aldric could have changed his name recently, but that theory raised several problems. Why choose such a distinctive name? Why accompany his new identity with an unbelievable story about another world? And most importantly, where was his real past?
Julien moved on to the next one.
2. Former military using a new identity
This possibility explained more: his physical condition, his reactions, some of his knowledge, and perhaps even his general demeanor. But Aldric was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.
Even assuming he had started his career extremely young, the scale of some of the experiences he described was still impossible. Not to mention that he talked about medieval armies, sieges, and logistics with far too much ease.
Julien wrote down a third hypothesis.
3. Witness protection / government program
“No…”
He kept it anyway.
The fourth possibility seemed a little more rational.
4. Foreigner who recently arrived under a reconstructed identity
That could explain the lack of any records in France, but not the complete absence of information anywhere else. It also did nothing to explain the sword, the Demon King, or the way Aldric seemed to have discovered things as basic as how to use a phone.
Julien added another hypothesis:
5. Psychological disorder / fully constructed identity
At least this possibility could explain the outlandish stories. But Aldric’s knowledge was too structured, his physical condition too exceptional, and above all, his behavior far too consistent for Julien to be satisfied with that conclusion.
Then he thought about Emma. She was a real estate agent, regularly met strangers as part of her job, and was certainly capable of recognizing genuinely concerning behavior. If Aldric had been dangerous or delusional, she wouldn’t have spent so much time with him or introduced him to Sarah, Chloé, Maxime, and Julien.
Julien paused on that last thought, and his irritation returned.
“You trust him way too much…”
He closed the file and looked at the photograph of Emma he had left open on his second monitor. The more he searched, the stranger Aldric became. And despite all of that, Emma was spending an enormous amount of time with him.
Julien straightened in his chair as an idea began to take shape. Maybe this investigation didn’t have much to do with his jealousy anymore. Maybe he had uncovered enough strange details to have a legitimate reason to keep looking.
He liked that interpretation much better. He wasn’t jealous. He was being cautious. He wasn’t digging into Aldric’s life because Emma was interested in him, but because Aldric was hiding something, and Emma was far too close to him to realize it.
“Someone has to check.”
Chloé found Aldric amusing, Sarah seemed to like him, and Maxime was starting to give far too much credit to some of his stories. As for Emma, she was now too close to him for Julien to consider her objective anymore.
That left only him to ask the right questions.
Julien opened the Emma folder and created a new document titled Potential Risks. He entered the first few points:
Emma trusts him without knowing his real past.
Aldric seems to depend on her for several aspects of his life.
Possibility of excessive attachment.
Requires monitoring.
If he wanted to understand Aldric, he would have to change his approach. Instead of continuing to search for what Aldric had done before appearing in 2026, Julien needed to find out how he lived now when Emma and the others weren’t around.
He already knew the approximate location of the depot where Aldric worked. Emma had mentioned the neighborhood several times, and the group had already been to a bar nearby. Julien opened a map, found the area, then examined the surrounding streets, metro stations, and main routes leading out of the neighborhood.
He zoomed in and traced several routes. The longer he studied the map, the more an idea he would have considered ridiculous a few days earlier began to seem reasonable.
Julien closed the map and opened a drawer in his desk. He took out a notebook, opened it to the first page, and wrote in large letters:
OPERATION VALDOR
Primary objective: Determine Aldric’s true identity.
Secondary objective: Determine his intentions toward Emma.
Priority objective: Protect Emma.
“Alright, Aldric. Let’s see what you do when no one’s watching.”